Scream Late last month, Charlotte Hornets guard Terry Rozier won a lawsuit over similarities between Rozier’s “Scary Terry” clothing line and the “ghost face” mask used in the 1996 film Scream. Easter Unlimited, a costume company that manufactures the ghost face mask and had granted Dimension Films a license to use the mask in Scream, sued Rozier in 2018 for [...]
Nearly every business has some form of intellectual property (IP). While it is an intangible asset, in many cases intellectual property is more valuable than tangible assets such as equipment and inventory. Copyrights Copyright protects original creative works, such as artwork, literary works, musical and dramatic works, software, sound recordings and motion pictures. Although a protectible work is automatically copyrighted [...]
The IRS recently reminded business owners of the importance of properly classifying its workers as employees or independent contractors. Businesses often prefer to characterize their workers as independent contractors rather than as employees, since independent contractors are responsible for their own taxes, including FICA, and are not subject to many of the laws protecting employees, such as wage and hour [...]
Our office has recently received a number of scam trademark and corporate notices through the US Postal Service, a reminder that you should always read what appear to be official notices extremely carefully. Scam requests typically look like invoices or letters, often containing false due dates or threats about loss of rights if you do not send payment now. Sometimes [...]
To be protectable, a trademark must be “distinctive.” This means it must be used to identify the source of the product or service. Courts classify marks into categories of distinctiveness. The most distinctive marks are those that are arbitrary or fanciful. Examples include EXXON for gasoline and APPLE for electronics. Suggestive marks, those that require some imagination to determine the [...]
Social media use is so common that most of us don’t give it a second thought, but there are certain legal restrictions that apply. For example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has guidelines for social media influencers clarifying when and how influencers must disclose sponsorships to their followers. A social media influencer is someone with a dedicated group of followers [...]
You may have heard there’s no need to register your copyright, because it’s automatically protected. But this is only half the story—you can’t enforce your copyright without either a certificate of registration or a denial of registration from the Copyright Office. Plus, there are a lot of reasons to register all of your copyrights promptly. 1. If you register a [...]
Vaccine Mandates New Mandates Just yesterday, the Biden administration announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will be issuing a new emergency rule for private sector employers. The new rule will require all businesses with 100 or more employees to make sure their workers are either vaccinated or tested once a week. Federal workers will not have the [...]
One of the most valuable assets a business has may be its trade secrets, and most businesses have them. A trade secret is anything that (i) gives a business a competitive advantage, (ii) has been and continues to be treated as a secret by that business, and (iii) is not generally known in the trade or readily discoverable through public [...]
Did you know that your failure to retain all relevant materials after litigation is “reasonably anticipated” could result in you being fined or sanctioned by the court? You may even lose the case as a result of failure to preserve evidence. In one cautionary example, a federal court imposed a $10,000 fine on defendants who failed to preserve relevant text [...]
